Self portraits 19 - 21

Here's another three ... its been a bit slow going the last couple of days. I've been trying to get on top of the housework (3 hours cleaning the kitchen yesterday!) and need a little time for myself too really. Running a household whilst being a full time student can be quite exhausting sometimes - I don't know how those with kids manage it ... anyways .....

Here's one done very traditional children's book illustration style - I felt I wanted to see if I could do it - and am quite pleased with the result. Caricatures, let alone caricatures of myself are not my strong point ... This is what I kind of look like most of winter - with my favourite cat-eared wolly hat on (a present from Sunshine) which you might recall from this. Watercolours on cold pressed watercolour paper.

This was an experiment - the background is acrylics on primed thick board (kind of grey cardboard). Then Indian ink and colour pencils on top. Is it just me, or does it look like a Chinese propaganda poster? Wasn't the intent - but happy with it nonetheless. Those who have known me since my dancing days (and my old blog) will recognise the picture ;)

This is what I imagine Sunshine (in all of his over-6-foot-ness) sees when he looks at me (in my miniscule 5-foot midget-ness). "Hello up there! Give us a kiss!!!" . HB pencil (and some colour pencils) on smooth paper.

My old dancing buddy and wonderful painter, Claudine, made a good observation on my 30-self-portraits project -

I think working in a series like this pushes you to take more risks. You run through a lot of the more obvious solutions to the assignment early on and are forced to push the boundaries of self portrait in order to complete 30 pieces. I am seeing your images become increasingly more dynamic.

Sunshine picked up on this as well, and I hadn't initially appreciated how much good this assignment would do me. I still have another 9 to go - but I'm thoroughly enjoying the process (although feeling a little exhausted at the moment!).

Something else that Claudine mentioned was -

A self portrait can be about identity rather than a straight representation. I see you're pushing into these different ideas of content already. I wonder what parameters you have set for yourself with this assignment. You mentioned you are trying to experiment with different media, what other ideas are you interested in exploring?

Hmmm ... that's a good question. I'd spent some time thinking about it, but found that 'thinking' kept me from 'doing', so I'm just going with the flow at the moment. I was also going to do some photography - but am not too sure as this is for a module called 'Drawing from life' - photography doesn't quite fit, but its such an open brief I might do a couple anyways. Also, at the end we're meant to do a collage of ourselves using selected bits from the 30 portraits - which kind of negates self portraits that don't necessarily have an image of me in them - I'd contemplated doing a few pertaining to my height (or lack of it) where all you would see is the top of my head, or a speech bubble coming from the bottom, etc. Mostly I guess I'm exploring different media, and also different ways of representing the face (hence the slow move into caricatures...). I'm quite excited myself to see where I end up at number 30 ...

In other news, I'm on Rama Hughes' Portrait Party with all my self portraits! Thank you Rama! You should go see HIS portraits, they're WONDERFUL!

Also in the world of the internet, I got a lovely comment left on my Disperse project (read it, fourth comment, here) by Darren Di Lieto saying that it had been received safely for the Mail Me Art exhibition, Woohoo! Have a look at some of the older submissions here.

AND also a shout out to all these people who have recently mentioned me on their blogs! Hooray for site traffic!!!